


when we all fall asleep (where do we go)

by singsongsung



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (sorry Cheryl), Cheryl is not a good person in this fic, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, The Society AU, levels of violence typical to teenagers trying to govern themselves, mentions (no graphic descriptions) of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-05-20 19:03:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19382866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: They all file off the bus, into the square, and right away, there’s a feeling of wrongness, a sense that the world has tilted on its axis. It’s almost entirely dark, save for the dim streetlights, and completely silent - silent in a way that not even the sleepy town of Riverdale ever manages to be.-AThe SocietyAU.





	when we all fall asleep (where do we go)

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU based on _The Society_ , because I guess Netflix is very good at getting me to watch ridiculous shows about teenagers and successfully getting me to care about said teenagers and their storylines. 
> 
> If you've watched _The Society_ , you'll notice that I've done some character mapping, but it's not precise by any means - some characterizations I've split up between two different _Riverdale_ characters, and some I've altered to fit better how I'd like to write this AU. You should not expect any relationship endgames based on this mapping. I've also changed some plot points.
> 
> That said, if you haven't watched _The Society_ , I don't expect that this fic will spoil you, since you won't know what I've drawn from the show and what I've done my own way, but if you really want to watch the show without knowing anything about it, this might not be the fic for you. 
> 
> Thank you to Liv for convincing me to write this, and to Alison for reading this first chapter. 
> 
> Title from Billie Eilish's "bury a friend." Thank you for reading! :)

_too fast for freedom_  
_sometimes it all falls down_  
_these chains never leave me_  
_i keep draggin' them 'round_  
\- florence + the machine, "delilah" 

 

 

 

The sun is so bright on the day the yellow school buses line up in front of Riverdale’s Town Hall that Betty worries her bra (plain, boring white cotton with a bow stitched between the cups) might be visible beneath her lightweight, floral-patterned sleeveless blouse. She sneaks a glance toward her cleavage but she can’t tell herself; she’ll need to ask her sister, when Polly makes her way back from the group of cheerleaders she’s laughing with.

For the time being, Betty casts her gaze toward Archie, who stands at her right, freckles more pronounced on his cheeks now that the weather is warmer and the sun is shining for longer periods of time. If the sun _is_ making her shirt translucent, would he notice? Would he like it, catching a glimpse of her underwear?

“You okay, Betts?” he asks, when he notices her staring.

“Yeah,” she says, giving him a sunny smile. “Of course.”

He smiles back at her, and her heart clenches. Archie just looks so _Archie_ , standing there in his short-sleeved henley and shorts, passport clutched in one hand even though he won’t need it until they reach the border - they’re headed to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Looking at Archie, decked out for summer adventure, Betty could almost swear she can taste orange popsicles and hear the sound of water splashing in between bursts of his laughter. He’s in so many of her memories, and for nearly two years now, she’s longed to make new memories with him, memories of a different sort.

Even across the town square, Betty can feel her sister’s eyes zeroing in on her, and she turns to see Polly looking at her with a mix of irritation and amusement. _Tell him_ , she mouths, and Betty looks away immediately, heat creeping its way up her neck.

She needs to find another place to rest her eyes, somewhere that isn’t Archie or Polly, and they end up not somewhere but on some _one_ : Jughead Jones, a few feet away with his usual group of friends, wearing jeans and a leather jacket despite the warmth of the day. Their gazes meet, and Betty finds herself feeling unsure, despite the little smile that takes up automatic residence on her lips and the “Hi,” she offers him.

“Hi,” he replies.

A beat of silence lingers, and then Archie says, awkwardly, “Hey, man.”

Jughead nods at him. It’s a somber thing, that nod, and Betty doesn’t recognize it as part of his body language. Jughead is part of a lot of her memories, too, though he all but vanishes around the same time her memories of Archie become associated with butterfly wings flapping in her stomach. Riverdale has one large elementary school, where they all learned to do long division together, and one large middle school, where puberty made Archie a football star as Jughead and Betty shrank toward the walls during gym class, and two separate high schools. There’s been a plan, in Riverdale, probably since before they were all born, to amalgamate the high schools on the north and south sides of town, but it has yet to come to fruition.

(In her freshman year, Betty wrote an article for Riverdale High’s school newspaper, the Blue & Gold, about how splitting students into two separate high schools based on geography reinforced privilege in the town. The faculty advisor wouldn’t let it go to print, and she had to have a “talk” with Principal Weatherbee.

In her freshman year, Betty lost one of her two best friends when Jughead enrolled at South Side High, only to slowly slip out of their lives.)

This field trip for sophomores, juniors, and seniors is the only thing the schools do together. Whatever entity funded the trip declared that it was for all Riverdale students in the specified grades, so in a sense, for the first time in almost two years, Betty and Archie would kind of be classmates with Jughead again.

“Alright, let’s get moving!” Betty’s biology teacher calls, and the moment, which had fitted Betty and Jughead and Archie into a triangle full of unsaid things, unshared moments, is broken.

As Jughead turns back to his friends and Archie moves toward the closest bus, Betty looks over her shoulder and finds, as she expected, that her mother is still in the square, keeping an eye on her daughters until the last possible moment. Leaning back against the family station wagon, the arms of a powder blue cardigan tied around her shoulders, Alice Cooper looks every bit a Stepford wife.

Betty waves at her, trying to convey _don’t worry, I’m trustworthy!_ in that simple gesture, and then she feels an arm slip around her shoulders. Polly smiles down at her: two years older, two inches taller.

“For the next fourteen days, you’re Alice free,” she says, and gives Betty a little shake. “ _Enjoy_ it, okay?”

Betty wraps an arm around her sister in turn, trying to let the reality of their brief escape from their mother’s watchful, critical gaze sink in. “I’m going to miss you so much when you move to Boston, Poll,” she says, suddenly morose.

“That’s not for three months. And we’ll still see each other all the time - you’ll come visit me.”

That sounds, to Betty, like the kind of promise that is both easily made and easily broken, but she nods at her sister anyway. It’s only two years, and even though her sister has always outshone her, always been the favourite of the Cooper girls, Betty wants to believe that Polly getting into Harvard means she has a chance at getting into Columbia, and then she’ll be in New York City, chasing down stories, away from the confines of this small town and the expectations of her exacting mother.

Polly rests her head against Betty’s for an instant, and then says, “Come on, we’ve got to get on this bus,” and Betty lets herself be tugged along.

 

 

 

 

 

Archie has saved her a seat, which Betty drops into gratefully, her heart buzzing with pleasure. Behind them are Archie’s best guy friend ( _you’re my best friend, Betts_ , he’d said when she referred to Reggie as such, and it had hurt and healed in equal measure) and his girlfriend Veronica - new that year, an ex-Manhattanite, on the cheerleading squad with Polly; Betty only sort of knows her. Still, there is an easy exchange of fondly exasperated eye-rolling as the guys passionately discuss the merits of the Riverdale Bulldogs.

Privately, Betty wonders if she’s the only one who knows that Archie isn’t so sure about pursuing a career in sports anymore, if she’s the only one who knows that he’s been writing songs lately.

As the bus bumps along the highway, she looks around and realizes that every student on it is from Riverdale High. Even on this trip, they’ve all divided themselves based on where they live in town. She thinks that the only place they don’t do that automatically is in the booths and on the stools at Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe.

“So, B,” Veronica says, crossing her arms over the back of Betty and Archie’s seat and resting her chin on them. “Are you looking forward to getting away?”

“Yeah,” Betty says. As always, Veronica is perfectly coiffed, even though they’re off to spend two weeks sleeping in bunk beds in log cabins. She’s also wearing a sleeveless blouse, though hers is a deep purple silk with a bow at the neck. “Are you?”

“Yes, definitely,” Veronica replies, and there’s such firmness in her voice and sadness in her eyes that Betty is reminded that her father is on trial for white-collar crimes. Despite how perfect Veronica always looks, she’s struck by the realization that her home life is likely no happier than Betty’s - and that it might even be worse.

“Are you going to go under the Falls?” Betty asks, making conversation.

“Of course.” The lights seem to switch back on in Veronica’s dark eyes, and a smile appears on her lips. “I think it’ll be romantic. Don’t you?”

Betty looks at Reggie’s hand on Veronica’s thigh and tries to imagine Archie touching her like that, tries to imagine being involved in that kind of casual intimacy. For some reason, she can’t quite manage it. “Romantic,” she agrees softly. “Definitely.”

 

 

 

 

 

The sun is setting by the time they reach their first rest stop, and when they get back on the bus, stomachs full of fast food, it’s not long before everyone starts dropping off to sleep. Betty shifts around for a while, trying to find a position to sleep in that won’t strain her neck, and then Archie says, “Here,” grabs a sweatshirt out of his bag, balls it up, and props it against his shoulder for her to use as a makeshift pillow.

“Thanks, Arch,” she says very quietly. It’s dark enough now that his face is half in shadow; hers must be, too.

 

 

 

 

 

Betty wakes when the bus comes to an abrupt stop, her eyelids heavy and her mouth very dry. She’s slumped against Archie, who’s slumped against the window. Someone, somewhere, is snoring. She figures they must have arrived at the border.

As she straightens up, she looks around, checking the corners of her mouth for drool as discreetly as she can. A couple rows back, Polly is covering her mouth as she yawns. One row forward, her friend Kevin has pressure marks imprinted on his cheek from using his backpack as a pillow. Just behind her, Reggie is peering outside, and Veronica is still sleeping soundly, curled up against his chest.

Betty gives Archie a shake. “Arch, wake up. We’re - ” She wants to say _here_ , but that doesn’t seem right, somehow, and the word dies on her tongue.

The bus driver stands up, then, and she looks to him for guidance. He’s wearing a baseball cap pulled so low that she cannot see his eyes.

“Trip’s cancelled,” he says gruffly. “Bad weather. Downed trees. You’re home. Gather your stuff.”

Throughout the bus, Betty’s classmates begin to murmur, and she looks over at Archie. He shrugs, his eyes bleary, and shoves his sweatshirt and headphones back into his bag.

They all file off the bus, into the square, and right away, there’s a feeling of wrongness, a sense that the world has tilted on its axis. It’s almost entirely dark, save for the dim streetlights, and completely silent - silent in a way that not even the sleepy town of Riverdale ever manages to be.

And it’s empty. Betty had thought, without a doubt, that her mother would be waiting, the station wagon idling, ready to whisk them home and into bed for their eight hours of beauty sleep. But Alice isn’t there, and neither is anyone else’s mother, or father, or grandparent. The town square is empty and still, not even a hint of a breeze.

“Hey,” comes the sound of Polly’s soft voice, and Betty feels her sister’s arm slide around her as it had, hours ago, in this very same place.

“Hey,” Betty says, so quietly it’s almost soundless, and she hears one of her classmates ask the night: “Where the fuck are our parents?”

“It’s the middle of the night,” someone else says, just a thread of uncertainty in her voice - it sounds like Midge Klump. “They’re probably asleep.”

“No one told them we were coming back?” someone else asks.

“The driver said there was a storm,” Polly says, raising her voice loud enough to be heard by everyone. Heads swivel in her direction, the Riverdale High students looking automatically toward the sound of their student body president making an announcement, the South Side High students seeming to follow their lead. “Maybe it affected cell towers or something.”

“Their phones are probably on do not disturb,” Reggie says cavalierly, and Betty knows how Mr. Mantle is, brusque and demanding and never really one to see his son as a child needing love and guidance, but her mother is cut from a different cloth. Alice never would have silenced her phone’s notifications while both her daughters were headed for Canada. She fumbles in her bag for her cell phone. The screen informs her that it’s 2:06 a.m., and she accesses her contacts and presses _Mom_ with her thumb.

“My dad should know,” Kevin murmurs, staring at his own phone, and an anxious voice in the back of Betty’s mind knows that he’s right. Sheriff Keller’s ringer is always on, and he has a pager, and a radio. There are countless ways to reach him.

“We should all go home,” Polly says, still using her student president voice. “It’s really late. This is probably a miscommunication or a misunderstanding or something.”

Against Betty’s ear, her mother’s phone rings and rings and rings.

People seem to opt to take Polly’s advice, and they start trailing away from the square, alone or in small groups. The Blossom twins lead the way to the town library’s parking lot, where the few students who drove themselves to the pick-up point parked their cars.

“Oh, a ride?” Kevin asks after them, not loud enough that they might actually hear. “No, no, we’re fine. Nothing like a good walk at the witching hour.”

Betty wants to smile, but she can’t. In her ear, her mother’s voice says, _You’ve reached Alice Cooper, Editor-in-Chief of the_ Riverdale Register _. Leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as I can._

“Mom?” Betty asks into the phone. Her voice cracks, which is so embarrassing she ducks her head. “Um, we’re home. The trip was cancelled, so they dropped us back off - ” She realizes, as she says that, that the buses have all disappeared. “We’re in the square and we’re just going to walk home. So I guess we’ll… see you soon.”

“They’re probably just asleep,” Polly says when she hangs up, in the soothing voice that used to banish Betty’s nightmares when she crawled into her big sister’s bed at this time of night. “Let’s go home.”

“Betty?” a voice asks tremulously, and she turns toward it to find Ethel Muggs, the Blue & Gold’s deputy editor, her face white as a ghost. “My house is too far to walk. Do you mind if I stay with you?”

“Of course you can stay with us,” Betty assures her quickly, looping her arm through Ethel’s. “Kev, do you want to come to ours?”

Kevin shakes his head. “I’d like to talk to my dad. I’ll walk home with Moose and Midge.”

“Text when you get there,” Betty says as Archie materializes on Polly’s other side. In the darkness and the silence, she’s so thankful for him, and for Polly, for the fact that they’re right there with her, and Ethel, too. She takes a deep breath and starts down the street. “C’mon,” she says to her companions. “We all need sleep.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Cooper house, the Archibald house, and every other house on Elm Street is dark, not even a sliver of light poking through anyone’s blinds or curtains. Betty clutches her sister’s hand, which she grabbed a few blocks back, and tries to quell her worry. It’s the middle of the night, she tells herself, over and over again. It’s the middle of the night.

They come to a halt in front of the walkway that leads to Betty and Polly’s front door. “Goodnight,” Archie says, smothering a yawn. “Text me if… ” He trails off, and no one picks up his sentence for him; no one wants to name _if_.

“Night, Archie,” Polly says, and then all but herds Betty and Ethel toward the door. The night isn’t particularly cool, but Betty finds herself shivering, her teeth chattering violently in her mouth.

“You’re overtired,” Polly says gently when Betty casts her sister a panicked look, her clacking teeth particularly loud on their noiseless street.

Inside, Polly turns on the hall light and they all set their backpacks down. The light above the kitchen stove isn’t on like it usually is.

“Mom?” Polly calls up the stairs, and then begins jogging up them.

Betty clenches her jaw, trying to stop her body’s shaking. “You can sleep in my room,” she tells Ethel, but Ethel’s cheeks haven’t gained a bit of colour, and she looks terrified.

“This isn’t right, Betty,” she whispers.

Above them, Polly’s footsteps move rapidly down the hall. “Mom?” she calls, her voice creeping up in pitch. “Dad?”

Ethel presses a hand over her mouth. “They’re not here,” she says through her fingers.

“They have to be,” Betty replies. “Poll!” she calls up the stairs. “I’ll check the basement!”

Polly appears on the landing, and even from the foot of the stairs, Betty can see her sister’s throat work as she swallows. “Yeah,” Polly says faintly. “They probably fell asleep watching a movie.”

Betty rushes down the stairs, calling, “Mom! Dad!” No reply comes, and the basement is empty, not a single light on, the television remote tucked away in the cupboard where her mother likes it to be kept. She checks the bathroom and her father’s “workshop,” which really serves as a dumping ground. Her parents aren’t there.

She goes back up the stairs and walks right past her sister and Ethel, both wringing their hands in the hallway, and flings open the front door, runs down the stone steps. “Archie!” she calls, but he’s already rushing down the steps connected to his front porch, and he meets her on the grass between their houses.

“They’re not there,” he says. His eyes are so wide in his face. “My parents aren’t here. Neither is Vegas.”

Polly catches up to them, scrolling through her phone intently. Her face looks like it’s set in stone.

“No one’s here,” she whispers.

 

 

 

 

 

The sophomores, juniors, and seniors of Riverdale and South Side Highs reconvene in the town square. Some of them, like Betty, are jittery, others look shocked, some are crying. She sees a couple people with deep, deep creases between their brows, like they can’t bring themselves to understand what’s happening.

Polly surveys the crowd. She’d called everyone back to the square, figuring an in-person meeting was better than an endless chain of texts. Betty wonders, fleetingly, which north side and south side students have one another’s numbers, how word got around. She looks for Jughead and finds him fairly quickly, deep in conversation with a girl with pink hair.

With a squeal of tires, the Blossom twins’ cherry red convertible arrives alongside the crowd, and they climb out. Cheryl has already changed out of the riding pants she’d been wearing for the trip, and is now wearing a hot red mini skirt. Kevin, Ethel, and Polly all roll their eyes at her dramatic arrival.

Betty is still shivering. It seems to get worse the more she longs for it to stop, and it hadn’t crossed her mind to get a sweater from her empty house. Archie shrugs out of his letterman jacket and drapes it around her. Mere hours ago, that act would have thrilled her down to her bones. Now, she can only clutch at the jacket and shiver beneath it.

“Just to confirm,” Polly calls into the crowd, stepping up onto a bench so everyone can see her. “None of us have seen _anyone_ , right?”

There is a general noise of assent. “The whole Pembroke is empty,” Veronica says, adding, “even Smithers is gone,” as if they should all understand why that’s significant.

“Okay,” Polly says. She takes a deep breath. Betty can sense that everyone is waiting for her sister to provide them with answers, but she knows that Polly has none to give.

Surprising everyone, Trev Brown speaks up. “The bus driver told us there was something going on with the weather. Maybe it was supposed to get really bad here, and it changed paths or something. Maybe everyone was evacuated, and maybe they can’t charge their phones. They wouldn’t be worried about us - they think we’re in Niagara.”

“But then why would the buses bring us back here?” one of the kids from South Side asks. He’s standing near Jughead, wearing an identical leather jacket. “If the town’s evacuated.”

“Because the threat changed, or passed.” Trev shrugs. “They wouldn’t wake everybody in the middle of the night so they could come back, but it’s safe for us.”

“That… makes a lot of sense, Trev,” Polly says. “Thanks.”

“I could be wrong,” he says, “But…”

“Yeah,” Polly agrees, pressing her lips tight together, and then addresses the group at large: “What Trev says seems pretty plausible to me. Anyone else have any other theories?” When no one speaks up, she says, “Okay. So - for tonight, let’s go with that. We’re hearing hoofbeats, and let’s think horses, not zebras. Let’s go home and get some rest. Anyone who doesn’t want to go home can stay at our place?” Her voice rises on the end, turning her statement to a question, waiting for Betty’s approval. When Betty nods, Polly does, too. “Come see me and Betty if you want somewhere to stay.”

“That’s it?”

Everyone turns to look at Cheryl Blossom, who’s sitting on the hood of her car, a pointedly bored expression on her face, a red-soled shoes on her feet.

“Go home and sleep?” Cheryl asks. “That’s your big plan for tonight, cousin?”

“It’s almost three-thirty, Cheryl,” Polly replies.

“Almost three-thirty and the town’s all ours,” Cheryl says. A smirk slides slowly over her red lips. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m in the mood for some chaos.”

 

 

 

 

 

The party at Thornhill devolves into Cheryl’s promised chaos with almost impressive efficiency. The Blossoms apparently have quite the stash of expensive alcohol, someone found red solo cups so as not to risk Nana Blossom’s crystal, and the majority of Betty’s peers are well on their way to drunkenness. She’s not sure how she found herself among them - were it up to her, she would’ve gone home, put on her pyjamas, and fallen into a fitful sleep. But Archie wanted to go to the party, and all of Polly’s cheerleading friends were going, too, so Betty and Ethel ended up walking to Thornhill with them instead of going back to Elm Street on their own.

It’s technically her first party, since she was never brave enough to try and sneak out before, but given the strangeness of the day, she’s not sure that it really counts. She spends the first little while in a hallway with Kevin and Ethel, grasping a cup that contains way too much rum and not enough Coke. Polly, last Betty saw her, was in the kitchen, rolling her eyes indulgently at a football player who was trying to flirt with her. She’s not sure where Archie’s disappeared to.

“I can’t believe people are having fun,” Ethel says. Like Betty, she’s only had a couple sips of her drink. “Something seriously messed up has happened.”

“Like what?” Kevin challenges. His tone is not unkind; there’s a pleading sort of sincerity to his question. “Like every single kid in this town up to age fifteen and every single person out of high school just up and vanished?”

“Doesn’t it seem that way?”

“That’s impossible,” Kevin says, gulping down what remains of his drink. “You know it is.”

“We think so,” Ethel agrees. “But what if it’s not?”

“It is,” Kevin insists. “But even if, somehow, that could happen, not all our parents live in Riverdale. I tried calling my mom. She’s in Beirut. They’re seven hours ahead; it’s daytime there. And she knows that if I call off our schedule, it’s important.” Staring into his empty cup, he adds, “She didn’t answer.”

“It’s something with the phone towers,” Betty says softly, because it feels like the right thing to say. “Or with… signals or whatever. Like Trev said. That has to be the reason we can’t get on the internet, either.”

“Yeah,” Kevin sighs, but she can tell that neither he nor Ethel really believe her. He holds up his cup. “I need a refill,” he says, and heads for the kitchen.

Ethel sets her cup down on a side table. “I could’ve given him this, I guess. I’m just - it just doesn’t feel like the right time for a party to me.”

Betty nods. “I know.”

Ethel offers her a small, tired smile. “I’m going to find the bathroom,” she says, and Betty watches her melt away into the crowd of inebriated teenagers.

She takes a couple more sips of her drink, wincing at the taste, and decides to look for Archie. She wanders through the kitchen, waving at her sister when their eyes meet, and moves into some sort of formal sitting room, all the furniture high-backed, all the decor ornate. There’s a group of kids sitting on the floor, playing spin the bottle. Betty hurries by, horrified at the prospect of being drawn into the game, but not before she sees Veronica locking lips with the pink-haired girl from the south side Jughead was speaking with earlier - much to Reggie’s delight.

The next room she steps into appears to be a study, with old books encased in glass shelving lining the walls. It’s the room the music blasting through the house is coming from; since they can’t access the internet, someone raided Mr. and Mrs. Blossom’s record collection. A Beatles album is playing.

In the adjoining room, which seems to be _another_ sitting-room-type space, all the furniture has been pushed against the walls, and a serious dance party is underway. Betty finds Archie in the fray, his head thrown back in laughter, dancing next to Valerie Brown, Josie McCoy, and a couple of his football buddies. Everyone in the room is participating in unselfconscious drunk singing, screaming, _she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah!_ Watching their silly joy, Betty feels like smiling for the first time since they arrived back in Riverdale.

The song ends, and Betty watches as Josie winds her arms around the neck of one of the football players. Others in the room start coupling up, and Betty figures that that, along with the track change from _She Loves You_ to _I Want to Hold Your Hand,_ is the most significant sign from the universe she’s ever going to get.

Palms sweating, heart thudding, she squeezes her way between her classmates, making her way to Archie. “Hey!” she half-yells to him, rising onto her tiptoes to put her mouth close to his ear.

He grins at her. “Hey!”

She wipes her palms on her jeans. “Wanna dance?”

There’s a beat, but then Archie says, “Sure,” and his hands settle, very respectfully, on her hips.

Betty links her hands behind his neck. _It’s such a feeling that my love, I can’t hide, I can’t hide_ , sing The Beatles.

It might not be quite what she imagined, one of Archie’s hands holding a crushed solo cup by her waist, no beautiful waterfall in the background, no new pink sundress with the skinny straps she’d hoped to have a chance to wear, but it’s now, and it’s something.

She sucks in a breath, rises up onto her toes again, and presses her lips to his.

Archie’s doesn’t kiss her back.

 _I can’t hide_ , The Beatles croon once more. _I can’t hide, I can’t hide._

“Betty,” Archie murmurs. He touches his mouth like he’s not quite sure what happened to it.

Around them, everyone starts a new round of singing: _can’t buy me love, love!_

“Archie,” she replies, her voice shaking in her mouth.

“You - you can’t just do that,” he says, and his voice is low, but she manages to hear every word. “You can’t - we can’t - ” His eyes take on the puppy-dog look she knows so well. “Betty, you’re my _best friend_ \- ” He shakes his head, apparently stupefied, and then turns and leaves the room.

Betty stands there, in the midst of jumping, singing teenagers, some of whom she knows, some of whom she doesn’t, and tries her very hardest not to cry.

 _It’s been a hard day’s night_ , The Beatles inform her, and Betty could not agree more.

“I take it back,” she whispers, but there’s no one to hear her.

 

 

 

 

 

When she can make her feet move again, Betty makes a beeline for the kitchen and finds her sister.

“I need to leave,” she says, interrupting Polly’s conversation.

Her sister takes one look at her and nods. “Okay,” she says. “Yes. We’re leaving.” She sets down her cup and touches Betty’s cheek. “Go wait by the door, okay? I’ll find Ethel.”

“Okay,” Betty agrees, and walks numbly out of the kitchen.

On the way to the foyer, her feet stop again, this time glued to the undoubtedly expensive rug by a sight that gives her pause. The serpent insignia sewn onto the back of a jacket isn’t familiar to her, but the beanie sitting on the head above it is stitched into her history.

She steps closer to the group from the other high school, from the other side of town, the group to which her childhood friend now seems to belong. “Jughead?” she asks, and he turns to face her.

It’s not like she’s _never_ seen him in the past two years. She sees him at Pop’s fairly regularly, and they’ve run into each other at the library, at the grocery store, even at town events that they’re covering for their respective school newspapers. But it’s the first time in a long time that she’s had the chance to really _look_ at Jughead, to observe the ways he’s changed, to take in the ways he’s grown up.

He was a lanky kid, but she’d probably describe him as _wiry_ now, a bit of muscle built into his body. His hair appears unbrushed, as it always used to. He still seems to favour combat boots over sneakers. She doesn’t remember his eyes being quite so blue.

“Hey, Betty,” he says.

“Hey,” she says, and has to squash her automatic impulse to ask, _how are you?_ Instead, she gets right to the point: “I don’t have your phone number. And with what’s going on - it seems like we should all be able to contact each other. So I was wondering if I could have it. Your number.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, and slides his phone out of the back pocket of his black jeans. “Give me yours?” he suggests, handing the phone to her.

Betty nods, and gives him her phone in turn. His phone is an older model with a small crack in the screen, and she feels a pang of discomfort when she looks at her own three-month-old, newest-model phone in its pricey case.

She types her number into his contacts, saves it under _Betty Cooper_ , and returns the phone to him, accepting her own in exchange. “Thanks,” she says.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jughead echoes, lifting his own phone slightly before pocketing again. “Take care, Betty, okay?” he says, and he doesn’t say it like it’s just a thing to say to end a conversation. He says it like he’d actually like her to take care, and like he’d actually like her to tell him that she will, and when he says it he touches her arm, just above the elbow, ever so briefly.

Betty nods again, looking into the face she knows so well and also not at all. “You too.”

 

 

 

 

 

On Elm Street, Betty gives Ethel her bedroom and sleeps with her sister, crying quietly into one of Polly’s pillowcases for a few minutes and rejecting her sister’s offers to talk about it. She goes to bed in her clothes, too exhausted to even contemplate changing, and drops into sleep with Polly’s chin perched gently against her shoulder.

A few hours later, in mid-morning, she wakes to the sound of pounding on the front door. When she makes her way downstairs, the skin beneath her eyes purpled and her hair full of tangles, Archie is looking at her through the door’s pane of glass.

She’d like to turn her back on him and close all the curtains and get back into bed, but she knows, instantly, from the look on his face, that doing so is not an option.

Betty opens the door. One of the straps of her bra slips off her shoulder and hangs near her elbow. This morning, she doesn’t care if Archie does or doesn’t want to see it.

“They’re still gone,” Archie says, breathless, his eyes just a little bloodshot. “Everyone.”

 

 

 

tbc. 


End file.
